Photos by Mary Yeager

First off, hello!  Can you introduce us to you/your band?  Who are you?  Where are you from? 

What’s up! I’m Andrew, I do vocals here in What Lies Below. We’re a Progressive Metalcore band based out of Harrisburg, PA.

What type of music would you classify yourselves as?  What’s your sound like? 

I’d say somewhere between straight up Metalcore and Progressive Metalcore. We have a lot of ambience and emotional parts, but connect it with the heavies. I hate doing this but if i had to FFO us it would be Currents, Erra and Northlane.

Alright, Let’s talk about this EP.  Tell me a little bit about it, the name, the concept.

Sure! So we wanted to go with something a little darker (heh) this time around. It wasn’t a spoken thing, but that’s what naturally came out. Personally I was going through it a bit in the early stages of the writing process after a relationship came to a close. Naturally, that is a topic that comes up frequently on the EP. Sprinkled alongside that are some topics I’ve wanted to get off my chest for a while. I really just wanted to dig deep on some buried emotion and get it off my chest. As for the concept, I just wanted to write and not have there be a silver lining this time around (unlike our previous EP Destinations).

What was it like to write it?  

A LOT, honestly. In some ways it really helped keep my head clear but at the end of the day we had to write an EP so we had frequent deadlines starting from January and going until late August. I mean hell, two weeks before we shot the Misguided Light music video we didn’t even have a chorus melody. That was a wild experience, but thankfully the idea randomly came to me one day and here we are with our biggest song to date. I’m thankful we have the team and the work ethic we have to meet these albeit self-imposed, deadlines. 

What’s your favorite track on it and why? 

This might change depending on who you ask but for me it’s a no-brainer. Misguided Light. Everything about this song I love, even from the first demo. When we laid it down with Chris (Wiseman), it was instantly my favorite song of ours to date. I just could not stop listening to it over and over and over. It had this “special” feeling to it that I can barely put into words. Lyrically, I had been saving this subject for a demo like this, as it is really meaningful to me and my journey. It felt like the right time to bring it out.

That EP release show was wild.  How did you feel about it?

I was high off this show for a good week following. It was nuts. We expected a solid turnout but what we got exceeded our expectations ten-fold. It was truly such an incredible cap on the wild year we had as a band, and for myself too. Since then, it’s been weird. Like a void after that release of it being done, and a “now what?” feeling constantly. It’s back to the drawing board for us. We have a lot of plans for 2024 and we want to keep this momentum up and moving. We’re very happy with everything this release has done for us (seriously), but we’re not satisfied yet. We’re nowhere near done.